It’s time to bid farewell to your week’s pay check once again with the arrival of Apple day.
Overnight the Cupertino tech giant unveiled an awesome new watch and iPhone models with scary price tags to match. Let’s not bore you with the marketing spiel though.
We’re hitting you with the features you need to know about so that you can determine if the Apple Watch Series 4 is worth your coin. The iPhone we’ll chat about separately for your ease of perusal.
Price & Availability
Let’s get straight into what you want first. The Apple Watch Series 4 will retail in Australia from a starting price of $599 whilst the 4G version will cost $749. That’s an increase from the Series 3 model which starts from $399.
Both models will be available in Australis from Friday the 21st of September 2018.
What You Get For A Bigger Price Tag
Apple claims that they’ve re-jigged the watch from the ground up to help wearers:
- Stay more connected
- Stay more active
- Manage their health
Design Upgrades
The Apple Watch Series 4 will come in two sizes to suit big and smaller wrist sizes – 40mm and 44mm.
Beyond those options, the watch will offer:
- A 30% larger screen for better legibility and to show off its latest customisable and animated faces
- A thinner case
- A speaker that’s 50 percent louder which improves phone calls, Siri and the latest Walkie-Talkie (watch-to-watch communication via Wi-Fi or cellular)
- A new S4 chip which claims to deliver twice the speed while maintaining the same all-day battery life (depending on your usage)
- A case back made from black ceramic and sapphire crystal which won’t doesn’t block incoming/outgoing signals
- A digital crown which feels more mechanical like a traditional watch
- Ability to listen to Podcasts
Fitness Features
The watch essentially offers fancy new ways to track calories burnt and your exercise minutes. Nothing too ground breaking but nonetheless:
- Activity competitions will allow users to challenge other Apple Watch wearers (sorry Android plebs)
- Automatic workout detection provides an alert to start a workout while giving retroactive credit
- Yoga and Hiking are new dedicated workout types that accurately track active calories burned and exercise minutes earned
- Running enthusiasts can take advantage of a 6-hour extended battery life
- High intensity features, including cadence for indoor and outdoor runs, pace alerts for outdoor runs and rolling kilometre pace, which shows pace for the immediately preceding kilometre
Health Features
A highlight Apple are spruiking on the new watchOS 5 software is its health capabilities. These include:
- An electrical heart rate sensor that can take an electrocardiogram (ECG) using an FDA approved ECG app
- What the hell is an ECG? Basically a diagnostic tool used to check the electrical and muscular functions of your heart to determine if it’s healthy
- The watch displays your heart rhythm classification as either normal or whether there are signs of Atrial Fibrillation (AFib), a heart condition that could lead to major health complications
- Your heart rhythm classifications and any noted symptoms are stored in the Health app in a PDF should you need to share it with physicians
- Apple Watch 4 can also alert the user if the heart rate exceeds or falls below a specified threshold
- A new tech in the watch offers a fall detection function which is suitable for older wearers
- Apple Watch sends the user an alert after a fall, which can be dismissed or used to initiate a call to emergency services
- If Apple Watch senses immobility for 60 seconds after the notification, it will automatically call emergency services and send a message along with location to emergency contacts
Model Variants
- Choice of three standard aluminium finishes in anodised silver, gold and space grey
- Gold stainless steel with matching Milanese band alongside silver and space black stainless steel models
- New band designs which are compatible with any generation of Apple Watch
- Apple Watch Nike+ also gets a new collection with redesigned Nike watch faces that match the new band colours
- Apple Watch Hermès for fashion-forward customers will feature an assortment of colour-blocked bands and exclusive watch faces that shift from one colour to the other with the passage of the minute hand